Pumarosa aim to add to reputation as exciting live band

Pumarosa, set to play gig in Leeds.

Published:15:00Monday 17 October 2016

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On the back of thrilling new single ‘Honey’, Pumarosa are about to set off on a seven-date headline tour, which will include a date in Leeds and their biggest London headline show to date at Village Underground.

The band have also been touring with Glass Animals across the USA in September and will join them for dates in Europe next month, but before then they can be seen at Leeds’ Belgrave Music Hall next Sunday (October 23).

Pumarosa’s early existence has been defined by strange, distinctly different spaces. There’s the Tottenham warehouse that Isabel and Nick moved to as the band formed, sharing a tent on a roof also occupied by chickens.

Then there’s the old derelict Italian cinema they were invited to write and record in by a local surrealist, where early songs were developed in the company of dramatic cliff-tops on the Calabrian coast, local villagers coming to the cinema to witness night-time improvisation sessions.

And there’s the Streatham studio of eccentric producer Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Bat For Lashes, TOY), from which their bewitching tracks to date – ‘Priestess’, ‘Cecile’, and now ‘Honey’ – emerged fully formed.

Pumarosa have since earned a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting and accomplished new live bands. From the half-knocked down house in Peckham – where they performed through a gas leak and an electricity shut down, as a packed-out crowd watched through gaps in the walls and the landlords swore after they’d never allow a band to play ever again – to Somerset House, the Royal Albert Hall (with Everything Everything) and Shakespeare’s Globe (Lauren Laverne’s Wonder Women Series), the band write music with “an energy to change”, a sense of progression steering every move.

Pumarosa don’t define themselves simply through the music they make, however. United under their “Industrial Spiritual” ethos, the band’s control over their visual identity is becoming increasingly important: Isabel hand paints all of the artwork for the band, the ‘Priestess’ video was choreographed by and features Isabel’s sister Fernanda, whilst ‘Cecile’s accompanying clip utilised virtual reality to imagine how desire might lead us into other, quickly-changing worlds.